The Philistines Return the Ark
6:1 When the ark of the Lord had been in the land of the Philistines for seven months,
Jehovah gave supernatural testimony of His sovereign power to the Philistines for seven months.
6:2 the Philistines called the priests and the omen readers, saying, “What should we do with the ark of the Lord? Advise us as to how we should send it back to its place.”
The Philistines asked their occultic priests to advice them with their divination arts.
6:3 They replied, “If you are going to send the ark of the God of Israel back, don’t send it away empty. Be sure to return it with a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and you will understand why his hand is not removed from you.”
The occultic priests suggested that the ark should be sent back with a guilt offering, so as not to offend Jehovah.
6:4 They inquired, “What is the guilt offering that we should send to him?”They replied, “The Philistine leaders number five. So send five gold sores and five gold mice, for it is the same plague that has afflicted both you and your leaders.
The Philistine pagan priests were very superstitious. They wanted to send Israel five golden sores and five gold mice, hoping to appease Jehovah with this type of golden bribery.
6:5 You should make images of the sores and images of the mice that are destroying the land. You should honor the God of Israel. Perhaps he will release his grip on you, your gods, and your land.
The Philistines did at least acknowledge that Jehovah was superior to Dagon. However, they looked upon Jehovah as just one of many gods.
6:6 Why harden your hearts like the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? When God treated them harshly, didn’t the Egyptians send the Israelites on their way?
The Philistines did not want to make the same mistake that the Egyptian Pharaoh made 400 years earlier.
6:7 So now go and make a new cart. Get two cows that have calves and that have never had a yoke placed on them. Harness the cows to the cart and take their calves from them back to their stalls.
Mother cows will never leave their young calves. If a cow has never possessed a yoke, then it will not travel anywhere. They will rebel against the yoke.
6:8 Then take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart, and put in a chest beside it the gold objects you are sending to him as a guilt offering. You should then send it on its way.
The Philistines were never given the Mosaic Law, so Jehovah will not strike them dead for mishandling the ark of the covenant.
6:9 But keep an eye on it. If it should go up by the way of its own border to Beth Shemesh, then he has brought this great calamity on us. But if that is not the case, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us; rather, it just happened to us by accident.”
It would be supernatural for the unbroken oxen to leave their calves and travel back to Shiloh on their own.
6:10 So the men did as instructed. They took two cows that had calves and harnessed them to a cart; they also removed their calves to their stalls.
The men did as they were instructed.
6:11 They put the ark of the Lord on the cart, along with the chest, the gold mice, and the images of the sores.
The cart was loaded up with bribery gifts for Jehovah.
6:12 Then the cows went directly on the road to Beth Shemesh. They went along, mooing as they went; they turned neither to the right nor to the left. The leaders of the Philistines were walking along behind them all the way to the border of Beth Shemesh.
God is sovereign over all of creation. The oxen followed the instructions of their Creator God and headed directly to Beth Shemesh. Beth Shemesh was a Jewish city, meaning “the house of the sun."
6:13 Now the residents of Beth Shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley. When they looked up and saw the ark, they were pleased at the sight.
The Jewish farmers were harvesting wheat in the valley of Beth Shemesh. They looked up and saw the ark of the covenant returning to Israel on oxen and cart without a driver.
6:14 The cart was coming to the field of Joshua, who was from Beth Shemesh. It paused there near a big stone. Then they cut up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.
Joshua is the Hebrew “Yeshua," which is translated as “Jesus” in English. Beth Shemesh was about fifteen miles west of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was still a Jebusite city at this time. Joshua cut up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to Jehovah.
6:15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the chest that was with it, which contained the gold objects. They placed them near the big stone. At that time the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord.
The Levites took control of transporting the ark of the covenant.
6:16 The five leaders of the Philistines watched what was happening and then returned to Ekron on the same day.
The five Philistine leaders knew from personal observation that Jehovah was the one true God. They should have led their people in the worship of Jehovah.
6:17 These are the gold sores that the Philistines brought as a guilt offering to the Lord – one for each of the following cities: Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.
The five golden sores represented the five Philistine cities.
6:18 The gold mice corresponded in number to all the Philistine cities of the five leaders, from the fortified cities to hamlet villages, to greater Abel, where they positioned the ark of the Lord until this very day in the field of Joshua who was from Beth Shemesh.
The five golden mice also represented the five Philistine cities.
6:19 But the Lord struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow.
According to the Mosaic Law, only the Levites could handle the ark. Even the Levites could not touch it directly or look into it.
Some Hebrew texts recorded that 70 men were killed. Most Hebrew texts recorded that 50,070 were killed. The number 50,070 is doubted by most conservative scholars. It is probably a copyist’s error. The number in the LXX and writings of Josephus (Antiquities 6.1.4) is 70.
6:20 The residents of Beth Shemesh asked, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?”
The presence of the ark in Beth Shemesh scared the people to death. They heard what happened to the Philistines. They saw what happened at Beth Shemesh. The ark of the covenant was an instrument of death when God’s instructions were not carefully followed.
6:21 So they sent messengers to the residents of Kiriath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down here and take it back home with you.”
Shiloh was destroyed by the Philistines, so Israel needed to find a new home for the ark. The Levites moved it to Kiriath Jearim, which was about ten miles northwest of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was still a Jebusite city at this time. The ark of the covenant stayed in the hands of the family of Abinadab for about 100 years.